Meetings users -- did you know that you can easily remove content from your room? Here are some tips:

1. For a quick way to remove all content (discussion and library content) from a room, choose the Remove Room Content command from the Room Tools menu.

2. To remove just the discussion content, click the "x" in the bottom of the discussion widget (only room owners and managers have access to this). If you're on the installed client, you can still get back to the chat content later by creating a meeting report:

3. To remove all content just from the library, in the installed client, right-click anywhere in the library and choose Remove All. You'll be prompted before the content is removed.

For future releases, we're looking at giving you a choice when you end a meeting to also clear out the content. Would you like such a choice? Let me know!

Are you someone who clicks the "Show details" link in the library, when selecting a file, to find out the information about that file? If you haven't done it, here's how you get this information:

1. In the browser meetings client, select the file, click the drop-down, and click View Details:

2. In the installed meetings client, select the file, click the drop-down, and click View Details.

Or right-click the selected file and choose View Details:

Here's what the file details look like:

This dialog shows you:

1. The actual name of the file (as opposed to the name shown in the library, as you can rename library files)

2. Who added it3. When they added it4. How large the file is

5. Where the slides were converted (locally or on the server) ***6. Number of pages

Is this the information you want? Is there other information you'd like to see?

*** Ever wonder what the "slide conversion" part means? Converted locally means that the native application on your computer was used to render the slides for the meeting -- this will give you the highest fidelity slides. Converted on the server means that an application running on the Sametime server rendered the slides for the meeting. This will almost always give you lower fidelity than converting locally. So how do you control this? In the Sametime installed client, if you have the native application for the file, the file will be converted locally. If you use the Sametime browser client, the file will always be converted on the server.

SUT really simplifies my work life. Here are some of the things I really love:

1) I can specify conference call numbers in my phonebook, and then have it just connect me automatically if my preferred device is my computer, or show me the passcode I need to dial if my preferred device is a hard phone. I have a lot of conference calls, so this one saves me a ton of work!

2) I can set routing rules so that my calls come in where I am, regardless of how people try to reach me. For example, I like to use my office phone when I'm in the office, but my computer softphone when I'm working at home.

3) If i need to switch devices, I can easily do that. For example, I can transfer a call to my cell or my home phone as need be (e.g., if I'm walking from one meeting room to another).

4) I can easily click someone's name in my contact list and call them when I need to talk, or turn a chat into a call if the conversation gets complicated.

5) I can use the live text widget to click any name or number in a Notes email or chat history to place a call -- no need to reach for a phone.

I really like using the photo view in Sametime meetings and photo views in my Contacts list (e.g., the Matrix view of the Primary Contacts list), because I find it easier to find my co-workers by their photos:

How about you? Do you use those views?

Anyone out there work for a company where employee photos aren't used?

I love using the Sametime Meetings feature that lets me take minutes during a meeting, because everyone can see what I'm typing, and it's all saved for me when I leave the room. When I flag items as meeting minutes, they are separated out in the meeting report, so I can easily see what was meeting minutes, versus just conversation in the room.

However I notice a lot of my colleagues don't use the feature -- they just type into the chat, without flagging their entries as meeting minutes, so that everything ends up being flagged as a chat entry:

We've got some very exciting news on the mobile front! Sametime 8.5.2 is now available on the Google Android mobile device! That means you can now have many of the features that you've come to know and expect from Sametime on your desktop or laptop computer on your Android. This includes:

Using Sametime awareness and chat features.

Tapping and holding a contact or group
name to display a list of options.

Adding and removing contacts and groups
to and from your contact list.

Reviewing mobile chat histories.

Sending telephone camera photos through Sametime chats.

And, if
you have Samtime Unified Telephony on your device, you can place Sametime
calls to contacts or people you find using the Sametime search. You can also change your preferred Sametime device to route calls to
other devices.

Using the new Sametime Bandwidth Manager, you can centrally configure and monitor bandwidth for Sametime audio and video calls. With the manager, you place constraints on how bandwidth is used in your network, to ensure that as many users as possible can use audio and video features and that high-priority audio and video usage gets network when needed.

Have you ever been in a web meeting and wanted all the browser "chrome" (i.e., the window title bar, menu bar, status bar) to disappear? Here are some shortcut keys you can use to do just that! Use the same shortcut to go back to the standard view.

On a PC (XP and Windows 7), you can use the F11 key in IE, Firefox, and Chrome.

On a Mac, use these keys:

Chrome: Shift-Apple-F

Firefox: Shift-Apple-F

Safari -- no keyboard shortcuts, but there are plugins you can install that will allow this behavior

At IBM, we've been using agile development process for some time now, and that process includes designers being part of project scrums. But we've only lately started using agile methods *within* our design groups -- that is, having design-only scrum meetings, and 2-week sprint schedules to address the design work we have across the projects we work on.

As a design lead, I find the scrum process extremely helpful, so I know what all the designers on my team are working on, and can hear what's blocking people. The daily 15-minute meetings take almost no time, and we really hold tight to that meeting time limit.

One of the challenges we face is that design is an inherently iterative process, so we've needed to build iteration into our sprints. Also, new requirements crop up each day, as we learn more details from customers, get Beta feedback, or find that a developer has run into a hitch. So we've had to stay very flexible within our scrum process -- updating sprints as priorities shift.

Overall, though, I think it's been a great win. Much more productive than our older-style weekly "status meetings". I like the fast-pace of 15-minute meetings -- makes me wonder if more of my meetings could be that short!!

We had our first Lotusphere User Experience lab prep meeting last week... We're busy working out new ideas for the coming year, figuring out what we need to improve in our lab. Feel free to post a comment here if there are things you'd especially like to see done and/or changed in our lab.

I have some questions for our fans of the Primary Contacts panel:Do you use the panel instead of the main contact list, or as a supplement to it?How would you feel if we integrated primary contacts as one of multiple views of your contacts which you could select, to display in the single contact panel, to save some space for your other plug-in panels?Do you like having primary contacts as a second view that can be seen at the same time as your full contact list?

Come see some new ideas the IBM Collaboration Solutions Information Development team is working on for videos!

We're considering using some animations in our videos, and we'd like to know what you think. Watch some short sample videos in the Online UX Lab and comment with your thoughts and opinions. Link to the activity: http://tinyurl.com/ibmvideo71211

Just curious, how many of you use the nested groups feature in the contact list? If so, how many groups have "subgroups" and how many levels of subgroups is the most that one of your top level groups has?

Download a free 90-day trial version of IBM® Lotus® Sametime® 7.5.1. This version extends IBM's award-winning and market-leading instant messaging and Web conferencing solution by introducing new capabilities that include point-to-point video, integration with desktop productivity applications, a tabbed chat interface, client support for Macintosh users, and server support for the Linux® operating system.

Lotus Sametime V7.5.1 is a platform for unified communications and collaboration, combining security features with an extensible, open solution that includes integrated Voice over IP, geographic location awareness, mobile clients, and a robust Business Partner community offering telephony and video integration.

Here are some of the exciting new features you'll find in 7.5.1 over 7.5:

Tabbed Chat - the number 1 request from 7.5. We are providing both horizontal and vertical layout options for a tabs for all of your active chats in a single chat window. If you choose the vertical layout and make the width of the tab column narrow, you can see user photos instead of text names on the tabs.

Save Emoticons with a right click over the image in the chat transcript - add them directly to your favorite emoticon palette.

Screen capture annotation - this extends my favorite Sametime feature even further! You can now draw annotations on the captured screen before sending it to your chat partner! Grab a piece of the screen using the screen capture tool icon in the message compose toolbar of the chat window, capture the part of the screen you wish to send, and then click and drag to draw red text on the captured image.

Chat history search - search across all of your chat history transcripts to find specific text

Multi-person chat history - now both one and one and multi-party chats can automatically be saved in the chat history, and searched as well

Spell check entire message at once - not only do typos get highlighted inline, if you want to run a spell check against an entire message at once, like in Notes, you can do it. This is an accessibility improvement based on usability testing as well.

Plug-in scalability - did the novelty of some contact list plug-ins you installed wear off? Now you can easily toggle the contact list mini-app panels on and off using the View Menu>Application Panels> toggles.

Expand All/Collapse All - like views in notes, expand and collapse all groups in your contact list from the View menu, or keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+(+) and Ctrl+ (-)

Primary Contacts - a new contact list plug-in ships with 7.5.1 to let you drag your favorite contacts in and see their photos in the contact list. Choose to see large, medium, or small images, or just a text list.

Edit your language used for spell checking - if your administrator makes the language files available to you, you can copy them into the plugins directory of the Sametime install location on your computer, then open the Sametime Preferences UI from the client and select a new spell check language under the Spell Checking preferences section.

Contact list scrub tool - a tool to help you remove contacts you haven't chatted with in a while to clean up your contact list.